Week one is almost done. Lesson number two is tomorrow. And I'm basically Jimi Hendrix now. Now that I'm done with the wishful thinking, I am both pleased and disappointed with my progress.
I am, of course, nowhere near Jimi Hendrix. This is not disappointing. It wasn't expected. I've done this whole music thing before, and I know that achieving rock godhood is more than a week or two of work. Hell I've been at the drums in some capacity, granted, mostly a fairly limited one, for the past sixteen years. I consider myself passable. My ambitions are to be a better than passable guitarist, but, then again, I always wanted to be a better than passable drummer as well, so we'll see what happens when I get to that stage.
The main thing I'm pleased with: I actually played every day. Even if I didn't sit down for real diligent practice, I did pick the thing up every day. That on it's own is a big success for me. I was also shocked at how much I remembered - off the top of my head, I could still make G, D, C, Em, A, and F chords. I have since added Dm, Am, and E to my vocabulary. Nine chords in a week is pretty decent.
Less pleasing? I'm still nowhere near speedy at moving between these chords. I've gotten okay at moving around the chord progression of the Counting Crows song my teacher assigned me, but I still struggle with adding a metronome and keeping the changes even. I expect this to be an ongoing struggle for quite a while, especially with my high rhythm standards from my drumming background. I'm also not pleased that I didn't spend much time with my metronome. Or the general chromatic finger exercise assigned by my teacher.
Fortunately, I have some time today after work to revisit these areas. I intend to spend at least an hour to an hour and a half working on them tonight.
My goal for next week, even before I hear from my teacher? Metronome metronome metronome metronome.
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